Energy stimulus spending fuels outsourcing debate

Mitt Romney and his Republican allies are reviving long-standing attacks on President Barack Obama’s energy policies to counter a Democratic push to label the former Massachusetts governor an “outsourcer in chief.”

The latest GOP criticism of Obama’s energy stimulus spending has led to a daylong snipe-fest between Republicans and Democrats over which presidential candidate is really outsourcing jobs.

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“It is interesting that when it comes to outsourcing, that this president has been outsourcing a good deal of American jobs himself by putting money into energy companies, solar and wind energy companies that end up making their products outside the United States,” Romney said Tuesday during a campaign event in Grand Junction, Colo. “If there’s an outsourcer in chief, it’s the president of the United States, not the guy that’s running to replace him.”

Earlier, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus unveiled a website that claims to reveal the “truth about how Obama shipped the recovery overseas.”

“Over his four years in office, Obama promised that he would focus on creating ‘jobs that pay well and can’t be outsourced,’” the website says. “However, as he racked up trillions in new debt; billions of dollars did go to create jobs that were outsourced or spent overseas.”

The website repeats longtime GOP talking points about the administration’s clean-energy spending. For example, it says Fisker Automotive, a company that received a $529 million loan from the Energy Department in 2010 for the development of electric vehicles, “is producing their $100K luxury electric sports car in Finland.”

But as POLITICO has noted, while Fisker has a manufacturing plant for its high-end Karma electric vehicle in Finland, both the Department of Energy and the company have said the loan money was used in the United States for design and parts manufacturing.

Ben LaBolt, an Obama campaign spokesman, took aim at the GOP attacks.

“Republicans are distorting the president’s consistent record of fighting for American jobs,” LaBolt said in a lengthy statement rebutting the website’s statements.

When it comes to electric vehicles, LaBolt said, the administration’s vehicle loan program is “expected to support more than 38,000 jobs and avoid the consumption of nearly 300 million gallons of gasoline each year.”

LaBolt added: “We understand that the Romney campaign wants us to share in their outsourcing misery, but the record doesn’t support their attacks.”

But the RNC shot back, sending reporters a March 2010 press release from Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Jon Tester of Montana raising concerns that stimulus wind-energy grants were going to foreign-owned companies. The lawmakers called for passage of their legislation to ensure “that stimulus funds are distributed only to clean-energy projects that preserve and create jobs in the United States.”

Meanwhile, the Democratic National Committee sent out an email titled “Making Stuff Up” that highlighted a New York Times story that initially noted the RNC website offered little information to support its accusations about Obama sending jobs overseas. The story was updated after the RNC provided a series of news stories that it says supports the allegations, a fact that the RNC pointed out in yet another email to reporters Tuesday.

“Find out what the NYT actually said below. We thought we’d help our friends on the other side before reporters accuse them of lying again,” RNC spokesman Joe Pounder wrote in the email.

The parent company of an electric car battery maker that received more than $100 million in government funding from the Obama administration has filed for bankruptcy protection, the company announced Thursday.

Alex Sorokin, the CEO for lithium-ion battery manufacturer Ener1, said the company suffered when demand for the batteries dropped as fewer Americans than expected opted for electric cars.

The parent company of an electric car battery maker that received more than $100 million in government funding from the Obama administration has filed for bankruptcy protection, the company announced Thursday.

Alex Sorokin, the CEO for lithium-ion battery manufacturer Ener1, said the company suffered when demand for the batteries dropped as fewer Americans than expected opted for electric cars.

Coal is a dead horse; the free market is already investing in clean energy and 'NOT COAL'. Wind, solar, and tidal power is less expensive even at face value and not considering the billions of tons of toxic mercury and other pollutants that coal spews into our air and fresh water each year. And also not considering the costs to the taxpayers of cleaning up the massive toxic coal ash pits which have destroyed many areas including Kentucky a few years back.

Wind, solar, and tidal has provided local jobs across the country and will provide millions more jobs in every part of the country because unlike fossil fuels, the clean energy fuel of wind and sun are everywhere and its cost stays exactly the same.

So, any town like Boulder City, Nevada, can greatly reduce its energy costs for decades while simultaneously employing local people for a long time if they decide to build a solar/wind farm. How many towns can claim it knows their energy costs 10 years down the road; Boulder City Nevada can.

Romney and the republicans need to 'stop playing politics' with America's future. At a minimum, they come as absolute morons, at their worst, they come off as traitors.

In biological & medical sciences the fed finances huge numbers of projects, the large majority of which are ultimately of little value. But a few spectacular and unpredictable successes justify the whole thing. Same thing in energy. Except instead of grants, the fed uses loan subsidies and other weirdo and inefficient financing mechanisms to keep the expenses off-book.

The problem is the energy investment system is really complicated, and thus subject to rent-seeking.

Grants would have been much better, but then its harder to be corrupt with grants, which is why grants were used in the first place (my guess). Also, grants cost cash money all the time. Loan guarantees and export subsidies and what-not are free unless they go bad - allowing the fed to disguise the of its involvement.

America's new found energy riches have changed everything. A few years ago the concensus was America was about to run out of Oil and Gas. Now experts are debating whether we now have one hundred or two hundred years of available energy using todays drilling technologies.

Rather than spending four hundred billion dollars a year importing foreign oil and gas; America can supply itself and eliminate our reliance on foreign oil imports.

The economic benefits of having new found energy reserves are stagering. Thousands of products are made using oil and natural gas. Fertilizer, plastics and fuels of all types can once agian be produced in America at very low costs. The entire transportation industry can be running on natural gas derived fuels. America is already in the process of switching manufacturing and transportation machinery and equipment to inexpensive and clean burning natural gas derived fuels.